In Port-au-Prince, Isaac Intensifies the City's Suffering

In America, Tropical Storm Isaac is being treated as a political side-show. Not so in Port-au-Prince, were strong winds, flooding and mudslides killed at least 19 people, according to the Associated Press. The capital city's streets filled with water and left the 400,000 still living in tent cities "miserably soaked." According to the New York Times:

One small earthquake survivors’ camp near Port-au-Prince was obliterated. “There was wind, wind and the whole camp fell down,” Marie Yolande Dorcin, 33, who is four months pregnant, said, shivering, as she and a friend tried to salvage belongings from her collapsed shelter. “Everybody went running to the church, screaming, falling.”

Joselain Joseph, 32, watched as a swollen river carried away trash, branches and even a basketball. It had destroyed a concrete depot where she kept rice, beans and other goods she sells.

“I rely on God now,” she said. “I don’t know what to say or do.”

Below, scenes from the clean-up:

A Haitian man whose house was flooded due to Tropical Storm Isaac tries to remove mud from its floor in an area outside of Port-au-Prince. (Swoan Parker/Reuters)A woman wades through flood waters as she works to save her possessions from her flooded home in Port au Prince. Reuters